The Elixir of Death

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Once again, the long-suffering Thomas had to ride across half a county behind the coroner and his officer. He began to think that maybe his objections to Eustace de Relaga becoming an apprentice clerk to John de Wolfe may have been misplaced. At least the youth was a more enthusiastic horseman, better fitted to these long journeys than himself, even though he had now mastered sitting astride his horse instead of perching sideways.

They had left Exeter at dawn, the coroner forcing the pace in his anxiety to search for Hilda of Dawlish. They made an uncomfortable overnight stop in a mean alehouse near Luscombe, some distance beyond Totnes, where they slept rolled in their cloaks alongside the firepit in the only room. After another early start, they rode off into the cold, grey morning with its constant threat of snow, reaching Salcombe soon after noon.

John went straight to the inn where the ship-masters had said that Hilda had stayed, but learned nothing other than the fact that she had never returned there. The parish priest at Holy Trinity confirmed that she had joined a band of pilgrims going west, but had not been seen since then.

Before dusk, they arrived at Ringmore as weary as their horses, and once again a surprised bailiff resignedly provided food and shelter in the manor-house. He had had no further news since the two shipmen had visited him, there being no sign of the missing lady.

'I've been up to St Anne's Chapel several times,' said William Vado. 'But old Ivo de Brun has had no sight of her there — not that his sight is much use, poor fellow, but at least he would be able to tell if she had returned.'

'What about Bigbury village? Any news of her there?' demanded John.

The bailiff shook his head. 'I've not been that far, Crowner. My wife has been unwell with white-leg after the birth and I've not spent much time outside this bailey. Thankfully she's improving today, so if you want me to ride with you in the morning, I'll willingly come.'

Tired out, they sought their mattresses on the hall floor soon after a meal and a few jugs of ale and cider. In spite of his worries about his former lover — and Gwyn's gargantuan snores — de Wolfe was soon sound asleep. It seemed only a few minutes later that the cold light of dawn and the stirring of the manor servants jerked him awake.

'What's to be done today, Crowner?' asked the patient Gwyn, as they sat over bowls of pottage, which seemed to consist mainly of turnips and cabbage, with hunks of coarse rye bread to soak up the fluid.

'Follow the route she took again, I suppose,' grunted John. 'First check again at this damned chapel, then go down to this poxy village where she was last heard of.'

There was a pause as they scraped up the last of the soup with their wooden spoons, then Gwyn let out a breath of frustration that blew up the hairs on his straggling moustache.

'What in hell is going on with all this, Crowner?', he asked, dolefully.

De Wolfe shook his long head slowly from side to side. 'Gwyn, I wish to Christ I knew! So many deaths, bloody Moors, shipwreck, alchemists, crucifixions — and now a missing woman.'

Thomas de Peyne, sipping his ale as if it were hemlock, ventured into the conversation.

'Before we left Exeter, I took that piece of parchment up to Brother Rufus to see if he could make out any more words. He could not read the Turkish script, but confirmed what I said about the Greek and the symbols. It seemed to be some part of an alchemist's formula or notes, about some process to make the Elixir of Life.'

When they had eaten and had a final warm at the fire, they went out into the bailey, where William Vado had brought round their horses, ready fed, watered and saddled up. Together with the bailiff, they rode the short distance up to the crossroads. The tiny chapel looked forlorn in the morning mist, as a freezing fog was hovering over the countryside, with no sign of a sun to disperse it. Clouds of vapour hung menacingly over the clumps of trees, and even the birds seemed too depressed to twitter. The coroner reined in level with the small porch.

'We'd best ask that old fellow if he's seen anyone about here lately,' he rasped, his breath steaming in the cold air. 'Thomas, you are nearest to the ground on that overgrown goat you ride! See if he's in there.'

The clerk slid inexpertly from his saddle and trudged across to the door, which was partly open. Crossing himself as he approached this very modest House of God, he called out to the custodian, who lived in a lean-to shack attached to the side of the chapel. Getting no reply, he went inside, and the waiting coroner idly watched the doorway for the appearance of Ivo de Brun. Instead, he heard a piercing shriek which he thought belonged to a woman until he realised it had been made by Thomas de Peyne, who reappeared as if on a spring, his face as white as chalk.

'What the hell's the matter with you?' roared Gwyn, leaping off his mare and advancing on Thomas, ferocity masking his concern for the little clerk. John de Wolfe was but a yard behind him, and together they pushed past the priest and rushed into the small building.

'God's teeth, what's happened here?' shouted de Wolfe, as Gwyn and William Vado crowded alongside him. On the floor in the middle of the nave lay the crumpled body of the custodian. He was face down, but was easily recognisable by the bandiness of his bare legs, exposed below his worn cassock, which was rumpled up almost to his waist. The old man's arms were outstretched, as if in a final agonised supplication towards the little altar. He was ominously still, and even more ominous was the spreading patch of dark blood which had soaked into the earthen floor on either side of his body.

Gwyn knelt at his head and lifted it with a gentleness that was at odds with his burly, rough appearance. 'He's dead, poor old fellow. But look at his eyes!'

With Thomas hovering with an ashen face near the door, John and Vado moved around to crouch with the Cornishman and stare in horror at the face of the chapel's guardian. The nose and one cheek were flattened and pale from contact with the ground, the rest having the purple hue of death staining. But what was most shocking was his eyes — rather than showing the former milkiness of his cataracts, they revealed bloody pits where they had been gouged out, the remains hanging down his face.

'Did that kill him?' asked the bailiff in a voice hushed with dismay.

For answer, Gwyn heaved the body over on to its back, displaying a wide area of blood-soaked clothing covering the entire belly and chest. Pulling aside the brown woollen robe, the typical garb of clerks in the lower religious orders, he exposed the now familiar wide stab wounds, four in number, scattered over the heart and entrails.

'The same bastards again!' snarled the coroner, filled with anger at the ruthless killers who could do this to an almost blind and defenceless old man.

Thomas came a little nearer, one hand over his mouth holding back his nausea, the other twitching repeated signs of the Cross at this further sacrilege of a holy place. Then something caught his eye which so surprised him that he forgot his sickness. He moved a few paces and bent to pick something from the floor.

'Crowner, look at this!' he said tremulously, holding out his hand to show what was coiled in his palm. Rather impatiently diverted from studying the wounds on the old man, de Wolfe glanced at it and his brows furrowed.

'A necklace? No, it's a string of paternoster beads. So what? This is a chapel — any pilgrim could have dropped them.'

Thomas shook his head, frightened but determined. 'Not any pilgrim, sir! These belong to your wife. I'd know them anywhere!'

'My wife's!' roared John de Wolfe. 'Let me see it!'

He rose from the side of the corpse and snatched the rosary from Thomas's hand.

'How do you know it belongs to her? How can it be, for according to Mary she's with her brother in Revelstoke!' He looked at the long line of amber beads, threaded on to plaited horsehair.

'It is hers, sire!' repeated the clerk, in desperate agitation. 'I have seen her use it in the cathedral many times. She has five sets of ten beads, separated by knots. See!' He pointed to the sequence of amber globes. 'That is the new way of counting one's prayers, instead of a hundred and fifty single counts. Three are counted for each bead, in sets of ten.'

John, his face paler than usual, tried to talk his way out of believing Thomas.

'New it might be, but there must be many like it.'

'Not in such fine amber, master. And to put it beyond doubt, look at the end!'

He reached out and touched a small silver crucifix that dangled from the tail of the rosary. Next to it hung a small silver medallion, with a rather crude picture of a seated saint on one side, wearing a crown. On the reverse were some punched letters, which John could not read.

'That is St Olave, sir, the first Christian king of Norway.

Your good wife diligently attends St Olave's church in Fore Street.'

Reluctantly convinced, de Wolfe stared about him wildly, his mood swinging between bewilderment and anger.

'So what the hell is it doing here, in a chapel with a murdered corpse? Who brought it here, for Christ's sake?'

Gwyn, who had listened silently until now, said quietly, 'Revelstoke is but a few miles west of here, Crowner. And your wife is mightily fond of making her devotions at any church or chapel that takes her fancy.'

De Wolfe calmed down with an effort, steeling himself to think rationally and act practically. Though he had more than once wished Matilda transported permanently to the other side of the world, he had never wanted her dead, which was now a possibility that he hardly dared voice. To his credit, the thought that it would make him free never entered his mind.

'But does the presence of her rosary have to mean that she was here herself? That amber is valuable — I recall now that she bought it herself many years ago, at quite a high price. Perhaps some cut-purse stole it from her at Revelstoke and then killed this old man for some reason.'

Gwyn rose and touched his master gently on the arm. 'Think how he has been killed, Crowner. With wounds like that, this can only be connected to those other deaths. This is no casual robbery.'

De Wolfe lowered his head and shook it like a bull being baited.

'So what do we do — where do we search?'

His two assistants had never heard him sound so hopeless and despondent. Then, almost as if in some divine answer to John's desperation, Thomas heard some faint sounds coming from the north wall of the chapel. Without saying anything to the other men, who were muttering agitatedly among themselves, he walked across to a small door that he presumed led to Ivo's living space. Putting his ear to it, he heard a soft keening wail and tentative tappings and scratchings.

'Crowner! Gwyn! There's someone in here!'

With huge strides, John hurled himself across the little nave, the bailiff and Gwyn close behind. He seized the rusted iron hoop that served as a handle and pulled and pushed without avail.

'Matilda! Matilda!' he roared. 'Is that you in there?' The only reply was more pronounced sobbing and wailing from the other side of the door.

'Open the damned door, d'you hear?' he boomed, pounding on the rough panels with his fist.

Gwyn pushed him aside.

'Let me break it open, Crowner.' But as he backed off, preparing to charge the panels with his shoulder, there was a rattle of a bar being lifted and the door opened a few inches. A thin face peered fearfully out and John de Wolfe stared at it in deflated amazement.

'Lucille! What the bloody hell are you doing in there?

Where's your mistress?'

Though Matilda was well used to being on the back of a horse, she was always sitting in the saddle, not draped across it like a sack of oats. She had to suffer the fearful ignominy of being laid face down with her belly on the leather, held on by a rope passing under the beast, lashed to her ankles and wrists. The weight of her own body made breathing difficult and by the time they had covered the mile and a half into the forest, she was gasping and purple in the face. Disoriented, terrified and in fear of death, she used what little breath she had to whisper prayers, an endless series of paternosters and supplications to Mary, Mother of God.

The past half-hour had been the worst nightmare of her life, heightened by the fear that it might also be the last. Matilda had been on her knees in the little chapel of St Anne, praying peacefully. She had also asked the Almighty that the waters of the well, which she intended visiting would help cure the unsightly ailment of patches of silvery skin which had recently appeared on her elbows, knees and in the hair of her scalp. She was telling off the beads in her rosary as she whispered the endless round of prayers. The old man with the milky eyes hovered near the door to his pathetic dwelling, a hut built on to the chapel wall, far too small to swing a cat in it. Lucille crouched behind her mistress — bored, sniffing continually and pretending to pray, though Matilda knew that her devoutness was only superficial.

There was the sound of horses' hoofs approaching outside, and Ivo de Brun's head went up at the welcome prospect of pilgrims and more alms. But what his weakened eyes saw a moment later was an apparition out of hell itself, as three figures burst in waving long, curved daggers. Dressed in flowing robes with turbans coiled around their heads, they ran silently to the centre of the chapel and stood menacingly around the two women and the old man. Matilda and Lucille heard Ivo's cry before noticing the intruders, and turned to see the dark faces of the Turks glaring at them. With a terrified scream, Lucille shot away towards the north wall, while the heavier Matilda lumbered to her feet. Bemused by this unlikely intrusion, she glared belligerently at the hawk-faced Arabs.

She opened her mouth to protest and begin upbraiding these defilers of a holy place, but Nizam forestalled her.

'You are a de Revelle?' he snarled.

Matilda gaped at him, then became indignant. 'I am a de Wolfe, fellow! My husband is the King's Coroner and you will answer to him for this outrage!'

The oriental ignored her. 'You are sister to de Revelle?'

'I am indeed. My brother was the King's sheriff and again you will be held to account by him for your.. '

She never finished the sentence, as with a jerk of his head to his two men, Nizam grabbed her arm and pulled her roughly towards the door. As Abdul and Malik closed in to seize her more securely, Matilda realised the seriousness of the situation and began to struggle and scream. While Lucille dived through the open door of the curator's hovel, slamming it behind her, Ivo himself stumbled forward with cries of protest and tried to launch himself at the marauders. Almost casually, Nizam struck him repeatedly in the chest and belly with his knife, and when the old man had fallen to the floor he knelt over him and with quick, practised movements mutilated his face. Having wiped the blade on Ivo's ragged tunic, the leader of the assassins followed his men out without a backward glance.

Now, half an hour later, Matilda was gasping for breath as she stared at the ground below the horse, seeing a narrow track covered with grass and weeds. She turned her head with an effort and saw that they were going along a path through dense trees, but a few moments later they came to a halt and the rope was untied from her ankles. She was pulled roughly off the saddle and fell in an ungainly heap on the ground, but was immediately dragged to her feet by one of the Turks tugging on the rope around her wrists. Stumbling and wailing, Matilda was pulled along by the man, the other two moving across to some derelict huts. As soon as she recovered her breath, she began screaming abuse, but all that happened was that her captor turned and smacked her hard across the face.

He said nothing, and even in her bewildered, terrified state, she sensed that he did not understand a word of what she was shouting. They reached a doorway in a ruined wall and she was pulled down some stairs, almost falling headlong as the villain tugged on the rope. In the dim light below, she hazily saw a couple more figures watching her, but within seconds she was hauled across to a door in the far wall. The Turk, who smelt strongly of sweat mixed with some aromatic scent, lifted the bar and thrust her inside, slamming it shut and dropping the wooden beam back into its sockets.

Sobbing with fear and shock, Matilda sank to the floor, her hands still tied with the rope that trailed beneath her as she lay on the dirty straw. Oddly, one of the thoughts that churned through her confused mind was that her new cloak would be soiled and hard to clean. Then a voice penetrated her consciousness and she felt soft hands trying to lift her shoulders.

'Lie here on this mattress, lady. Let me take these bonds from your wrists.'

As her eyes became accustomed to the dim greenish light, she was aware of a female figure bending over her. Gratefully, Matilda lifted her arms so that the woman could unpick the simple knots in the rope and then sank to her hands and knees as the woman guided her to a thin pallet in the centre of the room.

'Who are you? What are we doing here?' she croaked, as the face above her gradually took shape through the tears in her own eyes and the gloom of the chamber.

The woman with the bedraggled blonde hair did not reply at once. She had recognised the new arrival and was dumbfounded. An instant later, Matilda, even more incredulous, saw that the woman who was succouring her in her adversity was none other than Hilda of Dawlish, one of her husband's mistresses.